The Long and Winding Road
by DLJ
Summary: After Kurt graduates, Kurt and Blaine's lives head in different directions - but somehow, they keep coming back to each other. AU from the end of season 3, eventual Klaine.
1. Tragedy

**Author's Note: **Written for the 64 Prompts challenge. Writing it as I go. It will most likely span over a decade (both in the time covered in the story and in the time it takes to write). Later chapters will be longer. I haven't watched season 4, so consider it an AU.

* * *

It was inevitable, really.

They're still teenagers. It's a high school romance, their first love. They're changing, growing as people (and height, or so Blaine wishes). Blaine is in his final year of high school, Kurt is directionless and searching. They're growing apart, as people are wont to do. If it were only that, maybe they would have lasted. But then Kurt follows Rachel, deciding that even if he wasn't accepted into NYADA he could still follow his dream of New York. Kurt and Blaine are almost six hundred miles apart. A month later the couple realise their relationship is floundering - they're barely trying to Skype every few days - and so they break up.

There was no screaming, no slamming of doors, barely any crying. But they're young, and they were in love, so to everyone else it's simply a_ tragedy._ Rachel attempts to console Kurt with musicals, not quite grasping that Kurt doesn't need consolation. Kurt, however, humours her, because he realises Rachel is really consoling herself* because no matter how much she denies it, she isn't over Finn. Meanwhile, in Lima, Mr. Schuester offers Blaine every solo and encourages him to express his feelings. Blaine accepts, not because he needs to sing away the pain, but because emotional singing is his passion^.

And so the Power Couple Previously Known As Klaine is no more, and life goes on.

It's not the end of their story though.

* * *

*. Some things never change.  
^. See previous note.


	2. Correspondence

Kurt and Blaine stay in touch. Not to any great degree – maybe every week or so they'll talk for a few minutes on Facebook – but they do maintain contact. They know what's happening in each other's lives. Mostly.

Kurt finds a job as a waiter. His Dad is supporting him, but New York is _expensive _and extra spending money never goes astray. He shops at thrift stores, and develops a sixth sense for sales and bargains to maintain his wardrobe. He fills his spare time with work, community theatre and simply exploring New York City. Part of it is to try find his calling in life, to try decide his new path after his rejection from NYADA. Part of it is just to get away from Rachel – her almost-nightly nervous breakdowns are becoming a thing of legend, and after the eighth time in two weeks over a single piece, Kurt stops feeling guilty about avoiding her (besides, she nails the piece and receives the highest mark in the class for the assignment).

Kurt, however, doesn't tell Blaine about the boy playing Roger in his community theatre group's production of Rent, or how they've gone out for coffee three and a half times now. (The half is for when Roger brought coffee to rehearsals one day, the other three times they physically went out to café.) (Not that Kurt is keeping count or anything.)

Blaine, meanwhile, throws himself into anything that will give him a boost on his college application. He stays involved with the PFLAG chapter that Karofsky and Kurt started the year prior, and also starts a GSA at McKinley. He runs unopposed for Student Body President, and is made glee club captain alongside Tina (though Blaine suspects that Will is trying to comfort him after The Great Klaine Break-Up of 2012). Blaine joins the soccer team, and petitions unsuccessfully for both lacrosse and fencing at McKinley. He studies hard and maintains a 4.0 GPA, and volunteers for a suicide hotline one night a week.

Blaine, however, doesn't tell Kurt that he and Sebastian have been spending more time together. Blaine _definitely _doesn't tell Kurt that he and Sebastian spent more time making out than they did watching The Avengers last weekend.

(Blaine likes Steve Rogers, but Sebastian prefers Tony Stark.)

Kurt does tell Blaine about the boyfriend-of-a-friend-of-his-boss who it turns out is, in some convoluted way, connected to the fashion industry in New York and who manages to score Kurt an interview for an internship for a new label. Somehow, out of the thirty applicants, and even though he has no experience while everyone else was studying fashion at college, Kurt is the one to get the internship.

Blaine does tell Kurt about the new captain of the football team, Adam Davis, a new student at McKinley who also happens to be openly gay, and who has become an active member of the GSA. He also tells Kurt how the captain of the hockey team tried to beat Adam up, but he walked away with a broken arm while Adam walked away unscathed. From six hundred miles away Kurt smiles, and is amazed at just how much McKinley has changed in only three years.

Kurt and Blaine stay in touch, but it's infrequent, and both steer clear of anything relating to their romantic lives. It's not much, but it's enough.


End file.
